Volume 11 Issue 7, July 2018

January 2018 was an unusually warm and wet month across the Western Alps, with widespread landslides at low elevations and massive snowfall higher up. This extreme month yields lessons for how mountain communities can prepare for a warmer future.

Accounting for the oceanic transport of carbon suggests that existing estimates of the location and magnitude of the land carbon sinks need to be revised.

Detailed analyses of the source characteristics of two earthquake sequences lead to seemingly contradictory interpretations: one study concludes that each earthquake triggers subsequent ones, while the other favours a slow-slip trigger.

Ocean oxygen loss in a warming world is strongly affected by biogeochemical processes that are not fully accounted for in ocean models, suggests a literature synthesis.

A review of Earth system changes associated with past warmer climates provides constraints on the environmental changes that could occur under warming of 2 °C or more over pre-industrial temperatures.

Atmospheric simulations of Venus show that gravity waves generated in the afternoon over mountains can influence the planet’s rotation rate and explain a planetary-scale perturbation of the Venusian atmosphere observed by the Akatsuki spacecraft.

Biologically produced surfactants in the sea surface microlayer reduce air–sea exchange of CO₂ in the North Atlantic Ocean, according to tank and ocean measurements.

Rewetting of plant litter accumulated in dry riverbeds releases pulses of CO₂, reveals a global analysis of intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams.

Terrestrial carbon sources in the Southern Hemisphere and sinks in the Northern Hemisphere may be smaller than thought, according to a recalculation that accounts for the oceanic redistribution of carbon.

Enhanced algal productivity during the Late Ordovician may have led to carbon drawdown and the inception of the Hirnantian glaciation, according to sediment geochemistry and carbon cycle modelling.

Earthquake activity in East Antarctica is similar to that of other stable cratons, according to analyses of seismic data. Thus, the weight of the overlying Antarctic polar ice sheet does not suppress seismicity, as was previously thought.

Pyroxenite—recycled, subducted material—beneath mid-ocean ridges cools the mantle, suppressing melt extraction and crust formation, according to geochemical analyses of samples taken from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Seismic images of giant crustal-collapse structures preserved in the Yilgarn Craton, Australia, reveal that these structures may have formed over 2.5 billion years ago when the cores of continents were hot and weak.

The magnitude 7.6 Izmit earthquake that struck Turkey in 1999 was nucleated by an eastward-migrating cascade of foreshocks, according to high-resolution analyses of seismic data.

A strike-slip fault zone in central Alaska exhibits a range of earthquake slip processes, including very-low-frequency earthquakes, some of which transition into regular, fast earthquakes.